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The 18 Best iPad Apps For SMBs

Start The Discussion | Jake Widman | April 27, 2010 08:01 AM

With new apps coming every day, the potential business utility of Apple iPad lies ahead. Selecting the right iPad apps is key to transforming Steve Jobs' latest toy into a valuable mobile business tool. To guide you in finding apps that will boost your productivity, we've identified the 18 best iPads apps for small and midsize businesses.

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Charting And Visualization

Sometimes you want to quickly sketch out a project plan, a flow chart, or a mind map. While it's the most expensive app in our roundup at $49.99, OmniGraffle (from the Omni Group, longtime Mac developers) will be able to accommodate pretty much all your diagramming needs. You can think of it as Visio for the iPad, if you're familiar with that popular Microsoft Office program.

With OmniGraffle, you can draw directly on the screen to create shapes and objects and the relationships between them. The app comes with a large collection of standard shapes, 3D objects, connection types, and other "stencils," and it supports third-party stencils as well. Or, if you prefer, you can draw directly on screen and let the program turn your lopsided circles and skewed boxes into perfect ovals and rectangles. (There's also a freehand drawing mode that preserves objects the way you draw them.)

The app supports standard diagramming features, such as connectors that stay attached to shapes as you move things around. As you create shapes and connect them, they get rearranged on screen to reflect their changing; or when you're done, you can choose Lay Out Now to arrange everything across your screen. OmniGraffle isn't as cheap as mobile apps you might be used to, but it may prove to among the most indispensable.

If you already have iTunes, go directly to OmniGraffle.

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